


Distilled Spirits

by losercandy (pacificaxe)



Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Angst, Death, Ghosts, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:19:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1713713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pacificaxe/pseuds/losercandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rick dies, and everyone just wants to move on and keep it together. Vyvyan finds it a little harder to move on when Rick's ghost starts haunting him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distilled Spirits

If you had asked him later, he wouldn’t have even been able to tell you what they were fighting about. He didn’t remember. He remembered laughing and shouting and hitting and shoving. It was that shove. He barely remembered the fight before it, but he remembered that shove. He remembered Rick’s face as he was falling. He remembered his clawing hands trying to grasp, something, anything. God he must have shoved Rick down that staircase twenty times and nothing ever happened. How was he supposed to know something would happen? If you asked him, he wouldn’t be able to remember what they were fighting about. But it was hard to remember anything over that crack. That noise that sunk past his ears and through his stomach and in to the deepest parts of him where he would never forget it. That crack that meant something was wrong. 

Rick was dead, and it was his fault. Rick was dead 'cause he got shoved down the stairs and it went wrong this time. It when wrong and he landed wrong, with his neck all snapped and his face bleeding. And that was the last way Vyvyan was ever going to see him. That was the last way Vyvyan was ever going to be able to remember him. That was when Vyvyan started forgetting things. The first thing he forgot was how to breathe. 

It was an accident, and somehow everyone believes him just enough that he doesn’t get in any trouble, but there’s doubt. Lingering doubts. He can see it in the corners of their eyes and it drives him crazy. He’s seen looks like that before and it kills him that they’re coming from Mike now. Mike of all people. Mike who never gave him any backward glances. Mike who asked him to beat his flatmates with a bat, “in good fun”. And Neil. Neil. Fucking Neil. Neil was something else. With Neil it _was_ something else. No one had seen, but Neil had heard. Not the accident, but after. Right after. When Rick was on the floor and Vyvyan was shouting. Neil would never forget the shouting. 

_“Rick, stop being such a Nancy! Get the fuck up! Come on! Take a swing at me you poof! COME ON!”_

Neil regretted walking out of his room at that moment, because there are things you can’t forget. You can’t forget someone screaming with blood on their hands. You can’t forget the desperation in someone’s voice when they’re trying to scream their mistakes away. When they’re trying to scream someone back to life. And of course, Neil had been the one to call the ambulance. Neil had been the one to make Vyvyan go sit down on the couch. Neil had been the one to do all the work. Of course. Mike had paced. Neil had worried. No one had said anything. Everyone was scared. And Rick was dead, of course he was dead, they all knew he was dead, but still it stung to hear someone else say it. To hear someone tell them like they didn’t know. 

Rick was gone, in that stupid metaphoric way. And he was gone in an actual real-life physical way, in the back of an ambulance in a plastic bag. And yet he wasn’t really gone. Not completely. He was still there. A bit of him on the stairs, a bit on the floor by the door. A lot on Vyvyan’s hands. Red and sticky and quickly losing heat. Neil tutted and cried and didn’t know what to do. Someone was going to have to clean it up eventually. Someone was him, always. Eventually was now. Mike was worried as well. He also had work to do. His work was more pressing. More urgent and deep and just fucking scary. Mike had to talk to Vyvyan. 

And it was scary. Because when Vyvyan talked, he was all rage, and most of the time, he didn’t talk at all. Mike had to convince Vyvyan to wash the blood off himself. Mike had to convince Vyvyan to try and sleep. Mike had to convince Vyvyan to breathe. Mike had to convince Vyvyan for days. One thing Mike couldn’t convince Vyvyan to do was attend Rick’s funeral. Frankly, he didn’t try that hard. He knew he wasn’t going to win, and honestly, wouldn’t it be better if he stayed? Who knew what would happen if he went. How would Vyv act, and how would Rick’s family act, and would he still break something over Neil’s head if he caught him crying? Mike let him get away with it at home, but at a funeral? People probably wouldn’t like that. Mike didn’t like that. Vyvyan didn’t like it either, but he couldn’t stop it from happening. He was so fucking mad every time Neil started crying, that he just couldn’t stop himself. He knew they were whispering about him. Neil and Mike, getting ready for the stupid funeral and talking about him in the hallway like he COULDN’T HEAR. Vyvyan got up and stomped across the room. He slammed his door shut so they would know he could hear them. He was so angry. Why were they upset? They hadn’t even been there. They didn’t even have to live with this…with this…. _Shit_ …with this guilt. And look at Vyvyan, he did have to live with it, and he wasn’t crying all over the place! He wasn’t sitting in rooms whispering too loudly and just generally being a total bastard, was he? No he was….good and properly sulking in his room. Brooding like a child. But at least he wasn’t crying. There was a gaping hole in his chest, but at least he wasn’t crying.

**Author's Note:**

> (Please forgive me for that terrible pun of a title and please forgive me for shamelessly borrowing characters that are not mine. I guess you could say they haunt me [forgive me for that one, too])


End file.
